Sunday, 9 June 2013

Individual marble bundt cakes with ganache glaze

I watch an awful lot of cookery shows on television. A frightening amount. At risk of sounding grouchy and non-trendy
(oh, the very thought!) I am getting increasingly fed up with British
television’s (and my finger is pointing mostly at you, BBC) mania for blurry
shots where perhaps just one item might be in focus, swooping shots that make
you feel ill and focussing the camera on the presenter’s face so they can smile
at us when we’d rather be watching what’s happening in the saucepan or
bowl. Don’t even get me started on the deafening
background music, the fake little tableaux of ‘friends’ arriving for supper or
travelling around town on a scooter. It’s
a cookery show – show us cooking! Is it
just me? Am I the only one who longs for
a return to the school ma’am-ish presentation of Delia Smith? Am I so uncool and out of touch??? (NB. I also have a spin-off rant about cookbooks
with more photos of the cook/chef than the actual recipes.)

Anyway, what I’m building to is saying how much more ‘instructional’
I find North American cookery shows. My
current favourite is Anna Olson whose shows are perfect little master classes
in baking. No blurry shots, no flirting
and coyness, no catering for gatherings.
Just common sense and good clear instructions. Bravo!

It is from ‘Bake with Anna Olson’ shown on the Food Network that this recipe comes. I think I’ve only used my Wilton individual
bundt pan once before so this looked a good opportunity to dig it out!

I converted the recipe from the original cups (there is a
link for the original recipe below) but please note that I added two
tablespoons of milk to the chocolate batter as it was so thick it was like a
truffle filling and I worried it might bake a bit hard. I used my own ganache recipe, and I also
added some cream cheese frosting on a whim...as you do! I’m glad I added the frosting as the cakes
might have been a little heavy going without it.

I didn’t wait long enough for my ganache to cool so had to
do a double-dip. I like how the
chocolate layers came to rest at different levels; very pretty:

If you would prefer the original recipe in its original cup
measurements it can be found here.

If you would prefer the original recipe in its original cup
measurements it can be found here.

Method

Preheat the oven to 180°C/fan oven 160°C/350°F/gas mark 4.

Take a 12 hole mini bundt pan and spray with cake release or
grease with butter and then dust with flour.

Break the chocolate into chunks and place either in a bowl
sitting over a pan of simmering water (but not touching it) to melt, or in a
covered bowl in the microwave giving it 30 second bursts until melted. Leave to cool.

In a large bowl beat together the butter and sugar until
light.

Beat in the eggs one at a time, followed by the sour cream
and vanilla.

Add the flour, baking powder and salt and beat until
combined.

Spoon about 1/3 of the batter into a separate bowl – I did
this by eye, because there’s no need for it to be exact.

Into this 1/3 of batter, stir in the melted chocolate and
the cocoa powder. At this point, I found
the chocolate batter a little dry so stirred in some milk to slacken it. It will be firmed than the vanilla batter, so
don’t panic.

Spoon a heaped tablespoon of vanilla batter into each bundt
hole – I used a knife to make it into 2 blobs which I dropped on opposite sides
of the bundt.

Take a level tablespoon of chocolate batter and, again, drop
in two separate blobs in the pan, filling the gaps left by the vanilla.

If there’s any batter left of either colour add it to any
bundt holes that look like they have some spare capacity. You can fill the moulds almost to the top as
they don’t rise greatly.

Use a skewer or toothpick to swirl the two colours of batter
together.

Bake for approximately 20 minutes or until a skewer inserted
into the cakes comes out clean. Mine
took exactly 20 minutes.

Leave to cool in the moulds for 30 minutes before turning
out and leaving to cool completely on a wire rack.

If your cakes are uneven you can trim a layer off the bottom
to ‘smarten’ them up. I rather liked
leaving them as they were as I like how the edges went crispy.

When the cakes are cool you can make the ganache: Place the
cream and sugar in a saucepan and bring to almost boiling point.

Remove from the heat and add the chocolate.

Leave it to stand for a minute before stirring and bringing
the chocolate and cream together. At
first it will look runny but keep stirring and it will become thick and glossy.

Leave to cool for five minutes or the glaze might be too
runny to hold on the cakes. I learned
this to my cost and had to dip them all again once the ganache had cooled down
more.

Dip the top of the cakes into the glaze and then put them
back on the cooling tray to set. The
glaze will cover the top of the cake but the sides should remain clean so you
can see the sponge....of course, the odd drip or spill is not going to offend
anyone!

When the glaze has set you can make the frosting: beat the butter
in a bowl until smooth and soft.

Add all the other ingredients and beat together until smooth
and light.

Pipe or spoon into the well in the centre of each bundt
cake.

If you will be serving the cakes more than four hours after
completing them, put them in the refrigerator where they will keep for up to 2
days. (Remove from the fridge at least 1 hour before serving)

22 comments:

I so agree about modern cookbooks and cooking programmes.A bit of a nosey into the life of the chef and their surroundings is fine, but it should still be about the cooking, not the person.I thought the Rachel Khoo series was about right, some nice background stuff about her life in Paris, but mostly about the recipes.

These bundts look lovely. I will fish out my tin from the back of the cupboard.........

These look so good! I've not seen the appeal of a bundt cake before, but these are changing my mind.

I also agree about the cooking shows on the BBC - the worst ones are the Christmas ones where they sit down for a 'Christmas dinner' even though we all know they shot it weeks, of not months, in advance. The recycled tunes are also irritating.

Lovely mini bundt cakes! Bundt cakes are traditional here in Finland. I had to check if there's any pics of ones I have made in my all-in-Finnish baking blog, ullanleipomukset.blogspot.com and but I found just one :)I seem to be baking lots of other type of cakes nowadays. I don't watch much tv, but I agree with you that they should show us how to do it, not cook's or baker's face. I have some 350 cookbooks in our dining room, oldest ones are from early 1900's and you can see the difference how they are written. For me it's enough to see cook's face on cover.

Well, you're not alone - it could've been me writing the first two paragraphs of this post. It's a shame that so many programmes seem to forget what they are there for in the first place.

Anyway, Anna Olsen is one of my favourites, too, as her programmes are structured so you learn the recipes, rather than whether she has a nice little Italian deli around the corner. These look delicious! :)

These look brilliant - bundt tins put the fear into me - I just know it would all stick and look rubbish... Yes, I do agree with you about TV cooking programmes. My particular bug bear though is with the competitions - just can't STAND all that over the top 'cooking doesn't get tougher than this' b******s. Does my head in.

The competitions are so over the top, aren't they? I think they should make the antidote competition called "Making a bit of dinner" with people pottering around their kitchens singing along to the radio. Not every meal is a drama!

I totally share both your rants about cookery books and shows! I recently discovered the Anna Olson series but had yet to bake anything from it - these look so adorable and I love the double dip of ganache.

I'm a total cooking/baking show junkie too - can't get enough of them! There are some wonderful ones out there, but also some really awful ones (which I probably still watch, gah!). These cakes look gorgeous.

Can't exactly remember where the tins came from but most of my bakeware comes from one of four places: Lakeland, amazon, ebay or dept stores (usually Selfridges or Harrods).I have a feeling these might have been ebay

Thanks for the info. I see that you use Amazon for cake tins! That makes me laugh. In regard to your comment (thanks btw) that you revere "real" books for recipes, which are, of course, your true passion, that makes sense to me.

"No blurry shots, no flirting and coyness, no catering for gatherings. Just common sense and good clear instructions." I'd like to echo your words exactly! I love Anna Olson. I also watch videos on www.joyofbaking.com. Stephanie Jaworski also has that straightforward no-nonsense approach.

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